Akwaba, Assinie mon amour

Pascale Marthine Tayou

Foreword
Dialogue is a central issue in the field of arts : how to create a relationship between an exhibition place and artworks, between an artist and his public, between collectors and galleries, museums, etc… When two places meet and discover each other, it can result beautiful exchanges.
GALLERIA CONTINUA is an international gallery which represents artists from all over the world. Based in San Gimignano (Italy), in Beijing (China) and in Les Moulins (France), GALLERIA CONTINUA choses places that are remote from the art central points, where unexpected kind of dialogues can be created. The identity of the gallery is supported by this commitment, in a perpetual research of new synergies. The exhibition here in Abidjan is possible because of this dynamic.
Through discussions and correspondences between the artist, his galery and the hosting place, the exhibition was built very simply around the identity of each, and took the shape of a shared travel diary.

Pascale Marthine Tayou, cameroonian visual artist, reveals his ivorian experience in an in-situ-installation at Cécile Fakhoury Gallery in Abidjan.
At first, the exhibition invites the public to be filled with wonder, by facing excessiveness, a profusion of objects and a visual surprise. Then, each details is to be examined. Each artwork has to be seen closer, in order to understand the whole installation.
We enter the heart of a forest of coconut trees and walk along a path created by the artworks : Tayou’s famous Poupées Pascale, Classroom Walls, Garden Houses, light-coloured calabashes installations-sculptures, Néons Graffitis…In this exhibition, Tayou brings together works that have been presented all around the world to an international audience, and works that have been realized with local craftsmen and women. In this cosmopolitan universe, which reflects a afro-globalized generation, the artist illustrates the spirit of Abidjan, the « Pearl of the lagunas ».
The creation process began with the invitation made to Pascale Marthine Tayou to come in Ivory Coast. He came back from his travel with anecdotes, expressions, pieces of wood collected in Assinie (famous location by the sea) or pieces of fabric from Adjamé’s market. He made photographs, he collected some ‘’memory-material’’ that could witness his travel here. With this material he illustrates the strong feeling of belonging to the places he has been and obtains the starting point of the exhibition composed by stories, messages and ‘’objects-problematics’’.
Pascale Marthine Tayou explores people’s everyday life and bears a new perspective on objets. He praises what is forgotten, what is left aside, or what is burn. He uses this material, colorises it, breathes life into it and enhances it by revealing its beauty and its sense.
With this installation, perceptions are turned around, calabashes are twisted, fetishes are tied upside down, while raw trunks carry high some cristal dolls, his sketching books becomes a neon sign.
On this beach, one can’t get some rest, we are in action, attracted to every corner of the exhibition. When you are in the center you are dragged to look up, in a landscape that is not quiet, where spirits are pushed, spirits from the coconut tree forest, but also the narrow-minded spirits, and complacent spirits too.

This exhibition is only a chapter of a whole work build by Pascale Marthine Tayou. In his approach, he is always in a quest, in a perpetual research and in a continuity that never forgets the notion of the Here and Now.
He opens up to all cultures and plays with their codes, his origins deply rooted in him : His work witnesses it by its strengh and its universality.